


The World Ahead

by Canarii, Jitter



Series: Bloodlines [1]
Category: The Dresden Files - All Media Types, The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Character Deaths, Other, Violence, tw: miscarriage mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-24 14:11:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2584262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canarii/pseuds/Canarii, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jitter/pseuds/Jitter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night before the final battle at the Gates, Mab can't sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The character of Bela Talbot is brought over from Supernatural. However I am not tagging this as crossover because her writer treats her as a TDF character. In this verse Mab has brought her into her debt by locking up memories from hell in her head and keeping her sane. After a while it is discovered that Sarissa had an illegitimate child in the turn or the 20th century and gave the child to mortal family. The child ended up being Bela's great great grandfather essentially making Mab her grandmother.

Bela Talbot knew a thing or two about fear. It had ruled far more of her life than she’d care to admit. Fear of her father, fear of her uncertain future, fear of the increasingly inevitable. She knew how to contain it, manage it. She knew what it felt like to feel the paralyzing dread of her own death howling for her outside a motel door. It was a different kind of fear, she’d learned then, the fear for one’s life was nothing like what else what out there. When you realized that you were going to die, when you felt the purity of your own helplessness and could do nothing. 

Your pulse didn’t race then,there was no hysterical sobs, or short breaths, the world simply went still. Numb, achingly empty. That was what she’d felt in the last few seconds before the hounds had claimed her.

And it was something akin to that she felt now, the waiting was going to drive her insane. She’d come a long way since that night in the motel room, but she was still human, and she was pretty damn sure she wasn’t going to make it through the conflict ahead.

But then again, it didn’t look much better for anyone else facing the battlefield tomorrow. Or the general state of the universe, really. 

Still, Bela was restless, and at a loss for anything to do to distract herself from her spinning thoughts. Thinking about things she’s done, and so many things she hadn’t.

"Honestly child, will you stop pacing already? You will end up giving me a headache." Mab scolded her from her bed

It was not a real bed, not in a tent set up right outside the portal that would take them to the battlefield at the Gates.

It was made of lush pillows on the ground and still looked too comfortable an amenity to have in the eve of battle. Mab held a book in her hand and was dressed in a simple long sleeved gown, fit for sleeping in. She had her hair in a ponytail, a rare occurrence, and studied Bela intently.

"Had I believed you unfit to fight alongside Winter I would have left you in Wales." she said. 

Bela hadn’t even realized that she was tracing circles on the carpet until Mab spoke. Hell, she’d momentarily forgotten she wasn’t alone.

She sat down with a heavy sigh, all but folding down onto the makeshift couch of cushions in the corner, 

"I know that", she murmured, "Still…climbing the walls a bit." She had no chance of sleeping, and whatever conversation had brought her here earlier in the evening was long since past.

"Let us hope you will be the only one climbing the walls." she said her tone amused. "Although the walls by the Gates seem a little too tall to climb."

She was making jokes. Their world could potentially end on the morrow and she was making jokes. 

She needed rest. She needed to be at her best because tomorrow would begin a battle as dire as noone had ever seen since the dawn of the cosmos. Still, she wasn’t sleepy, hence the book. Her Knight had dropped it off  (“It might do you fucking good to read something that isn’t philosophy once in a while, Mab.”) and she honestly liked it so far, even though it didn’t help take her mind off things.

Bela had wandered into her tent a little after what she deemed to be midnight. She hadn’t always been close to the woman. Their connection had started as yet another client, then vassal and in an ironic turn of events they had found each other being connected through blood, thin as it was. 

She set her book aside and rubbed her eyes for a moment.

"Talk to me if it will take your mind off things. Tell me of that man you met."

She could also use a distraction even though she’d never admit as such. 

Bela looked up at the canopy above them, forcing herself to release a long breath and relax a little. 

At another time she might have admitted she found it slightly charming how Mab tended to ask after her love life. Spotty and usually nonexistent as it might be. But now she was miles away, and nothing could be further from her mind. 

"Nothing to say", she shrugged a little, "It wasn’t going to work out anyway." If possible the life she lived now was even stranger and more removed from the norm than it had been when she was younger. At least then she circles she ran in were primarily human.

"Seven Winds, girl you are not making this easier." Mab grumbled as she rolled to lay on her back and also stare at the canopy. She had purposely made a small hole there so she could look at the stars before she fell asleep. 

She picked up the book again, tracing her fingers over the cover. The irony that it was written by a previous Knight of Summer did not escape her attention. It was good. A lot of things in it were in fact based on the field by the Gates but the man had a way with words that Mab could appreciate.

"Come on then, if you are not going to talk ask me things. I might even answer." she offered. 

Bela rolled her eyes, following the queen’s gaze to the constellations above. It made the tent less claustrophobic somehow, and she appreciated it greatly, ” Sorry to spoil your fun, but there’s not much to say. Old contact blew into town, we reconnected-quite literally if you must know, and that was that. If you were expecting a grand romance I’m not the girl to ask.” Her tone was clipped but not sharp. That was simply the way they spoke to each other, never losing the facade of irritation and a safe distance even when there was no real conflict. "And I know better than to ask for answers blindly from you."

"Too bad as I was willing to answer, for once." Mab said shrugging pulling one of the blankets over her. She wasn’t cold, of course, but she liked the comfort it offered her. She was also quite overwhelmed by the prospect of the battle but she wouldn’t let Bela know.

She called a malk then, asked for coffee then turned to Bela.

"Would you also want some?" 

Bela rolled onto her side, facing Mab. If she didn’t know better she’d think the Queen was almost as apprehensive as she was, but that couldn’t be true. There was a world of difference between the kind of scared Bela, as a mortal with only a few years of magical training was and a bloody sidhe Queen could be. 

She shook her head, folding her hands over her stomach, “No, I’m jumpy enough as it is.” That and her nerves had been making her nauseas enough, she didn’t dare add caffeine into the mix.

Mab studied the woman closely her brow furrowing for a moment. She turned to the malk.

"Bring her an herbal tea then." she said and then switched to High Sidhe and added something more as instructions.

The malk bowed its head and left to fetch their beverages and Mab pursed her lips, looking up at the sky again. Bela didn’t protest, Mab knew her too well by now. The tea would be peppermint and preferably lukewarm, most likely. She tried not to smile a little at the order, which was easy when Mab switched out of english, and her nerves went back on edge. There was something more than simple linguistics to the tongue of the sidhe, Bela knew. There must be, because despite her efforts she’d only learned to recognize the odd word or two, and she’d never met a language that didn’t come as second nature to her.

She was too worked up, there was no reason to be suspicious of everything Mab was doing, especially now. Hell, once she might have wondered if the Queen had told the malk to add some cyanide to her tea but those days at least, were past.

"There are fewer stars in the skies tonight." she said simply. 

Bela looked up, “If they have any sense they’ve run for it”, she joked grimly.

"True." Mab agreed to Bela’s joke which was quite chilling, "I have noticed at least three hundred solar systems have ceased to exist this past moon cycle."

The malk returned with two pots and cups, one with coffee for Queen Mab, one with -as well guessed- peppermint tea for Bela. "I think we are rapidly heading towards empty night." she said when the malk was gone. 

Bela let out a long breath, she didn’t need to know that, she didn’t need anything more to make her blood run cold at the thought of what was to come. She’d died before, but nothing else had ended. She’d left behind and empty life and returned to the same. With no real friends and all her bills set up to auto-pay no one had even noticed she’d died. 

But this was the end of-so much more, it was almost inconceivable. She shivered a little, despite herself. The malk delivered the tea and Bela gave a polite nod to the creature and set the mug by her side to let it cool more.

"Well", she sighed, "Been living on stolen time anyway." Bela glanced over at Mab, a hint of a sly smirk at the edges of her lips, "I don’t borrow anything."

Mab let a small laugh escaped her at that. The corner of her mouth twitched again at the Queen’s musical laughter. Yes, it might all be graveyard humour but it was still a bit funny.

“You have paid many a-times over for that ‘stolen’ time, granddaughter.” Mab said.  It was true and there was no need to deny it, not in a night like this when it might as well be the last peaceful night they ever had. 

"Yes, well, you know what they say; life’s a bitch and then you die", Bela paused, arching an eyebrow pointedly, "-and then sometimes its a bitch again."

"Have you met with the Lady Summer?" Mab inquired.

She rolled over to take a sip of her tea, the flavour was somehow too peppery, and she put it aside again. She must be working herself into a cold, the way she was feeling. On the plus side if she died tomorrow there’d be no need to pick up any Nyquil.

"No", she said after a moment, "I  thought about it, but-", She and Sarissa, well it was a bit strange between them still.

"I understand." Mab nodded. She had been to see her daughter for a moment. Titania had been gentle, allowing them a full hour to have together before Mab had to leave for the field. She knew she would see Sarissa again at the Gates but she would be there as a medic and Mab sure as oblivion hoped she would NOT need a medic.

"I- didn’t think we’d have much to talk about", Bela added, closing the matter on Sarissa. It had been always strained between them, maybe Sarissa was looking for some sort of bond that wasn’t there, and maybe Bela was fleeing the very thought of it all. It didn’t matter, her clear allegiance with Winter had made it even more complicated. 

Mab contemplated on talking to Bela about her fears, about what she knew would be the role of the Queen of Winter in this battle. She weighed the pros and cons.

If they died on the morrow the cons didn’t really matter, did they?

"The last time I remember being this…apprehensive I ended up stranded on the Outside with the Winter Knight." Mab said with a strained smile, "I do not know how well this bodes for us." 

Bela looked at her curiously. Mab’s vulnerable moments were few and far between, so it was always somewhat jarring to witness one. Still, with what they were facing, even someone as formidable as Mab would be stupid not to worry. 

"You’re not very good at this pep talk thing, are you?" She drawled at the final comment, her stomach flipping over again at the thought of what the dawn might bring. 

"Pep?" Mab asked tilting her head, "I cannot fill your head with lies, child. You very well know I am unable to speak anything that is untrue."

Mab pulled the blanket around her like a toga, taking a deep breath inhaling its scent. It smelled like her suite. Mint and orchids and white musk. She felt homesick. She hadn’t been in her rooms in over a month. She had left her silver music box there too, a keepsake from the only man she would even dare think of as her partner, a husband even, She turned to look at Bela again,

"Why turn your head with talks of victory when it might as well be our last night on this green earth?"

 "Because - that's what people do. Rallying the troops and such", Bela looked up again at the patch of sky with its smattering of stars. "Doesn’t matter really", she sighed softly, "Wouldn’t have believed you anyway." She’d never been much for the power of positive thinking, it had never gotten her anywhere in life after all.

A long moment passed, and she closed her eyes for a second, the dark of the night sky blending with the dark of blindness. Bela murmured, almost inaudibly.

"…I’m completely terrified". 

It was a painful admission under any circumstances, but especially to the one person you should never bare weakness for. You might as well flash your jugular at a lion. Bela bit her lip, looking back up at the canopy of tenting above,

"-and don’t you dare make fun, I’m not in the mood." The last thing she needed was some sly comments about the fragility of humans about now.

Mab sat with her back on one of the supporting rods of the tent. She had strategically made her bed close to that so she could use the rod as a kind of a headboard to lean on. She placed her cup between her blanket covered knees and leaned foreward, resting her chin on her left knee.

"That is quite alright." Mab said gently. "I am too."

 Bela looked over sharply, her surprise at the admission obvious. Mab had never been so candid with her, but she supposed these were extreme circumstances.

"Honestly?" The word just slipped put, without her say so in the least.

Bela looked at her for a long moment, before glancing away again. She rolled on her stomach, cheek leaning into a forearm softly.

What she didn’t say was that Mab’s words only scared her more. She’d never thought of herself as particularly brave. Sly and cunning, yes, but that was different than brave. And right now she felt smaller and as far from courageous as she had in a very long time.

Mab drained her cup from the coffee and set it aside. She probably would go through the whole pot tonight so she’d have to pace herself anyway.

"If you count in Earthen years," she said with her voice low, almost eerie at how silent it was yet resonated in the room around them, "I am more than three thousand years old. If you count in the years of the Never-never where I dwell it might be even close to a billion." She was speaking softly, as if talking to herself, her eyes scanning the stars once more. "Would it be covetous if I said it is still not enough? Would I be avaricious should I say that I would like another billion?"

 Bela’s eyes slid over to Mab without otherwise moving, drawn in by the low lull of her voice. It made the hair on the back of her neck prickle a little, it was too easy sometimes to forget exactly what Mab was when you spent enough time around her.

She chewed on her words for a long time, “I was twenty four when I died”, she murmured. “It didn’t feel fair then…doesn’t seem any better now so- No. It’s not selfish. Everyone gets a lifetime, no more or less, and I don’t think it’s ever supposed to be enough.”

"You mortals seem to do a lot of dying and coming back to life nowadays. It has almost robbed the word of its meaning." she laughed again. Another star went out, then one more. 347.

Her gut twitched and she closed her eyes.

"I have never died.:Mab said. truly ressurection seemed trivial in the past decade figurative or literal.

 "I don’t recommend it", Bela said dryly, "It’s not much fun", even for those fortunate enough to go out in gentler ways than via hellhounds. 

"Unless you take into account the day I donned my mantle. Mab died that day and a Queen of Faerie was born." Mab sighed, "I was given less than eleven years as a mortal." she couldn’t remember if she had ever mentioned to Bela that she had been a mortal once. "I was supposed to die on the side of the road. Every day after that has been a gift."

She could not have guessed what would follow, the silent admission between the words spoken and those not that painted a picture she’d never imagined. But it didn’t shock her, somehow. Mab had been human once, albeit presumably at the dawn of time, and somehow it just made sense.

She was such an imposing alien figure, but if anyone knew how easy it was to become chilled to the world it was Bela Talbot.

"That’s a lot of gifts", she remarked softly. History had never been kind to little girls, it seemed. 

"Indeed it is. Although despite how much I like being, had I known what lay ahead of me, I might have opted for death after all…" Mab trailed off, her eyes leaving the sky to return to the broken spine of the paperback next to her feet. She opened it absently, she had placed a torn piece of tissue between the pages where she had left it, instead of a bookmark.

She read aloud:  _“Many are the strange chances of the world,’ said Mithrandir, ‘and help oft shall come from the hands of the weak when the Wise falter.”_

She then turned to Bela, “Seems strangely fitting, don’t you think?”

 Bela grimaced a little, she’d had similar thoughts on occasion, although the final consensus always remained that she preferred living.

"I suppose", she snorted, looking over at the book, "Interesting choice of reading material."

"The Sir Knight was kind enough to lend it to me." she said flipping through the pages.

 "Of course he did, the big nerd", Bela drawled, with a hint of affection in her tone. Mab corked an eyebrow but didn’t comment on the ‘nerd’ remark.

"I have so far enjoyed the depictions of what is considered good and evil, it does not follow faerie tale logic." She had propped the book next to her toes and was leaning over her knee as she scanned the pages, “Have you read it?”

"I haven’t", she shook her head a little, "Was never much for fantasy. Or fiction, after a point. Had enough of it in the day to day." She rolled onto her stomach, leaning her chin on her hands, “Still, saw the films.” Back before she fried technology, that was. 

“Fantasy? I considered this historial fiction.” she frowned looking at the back of the book. “This one has not been made into a picture yet as far as I am aware.”

She continued flipping  though the book, through the pages she had already read. “I think I like this Fingolfin the best. And I am quite awed that a knight of Summer has been able to actually see it is not all black and white.” 

"Tomato, tohmato", Bela waved a hand flippantly, "Yeah, not exactly, but the author's other books have, about ten years back. "

She was genuinely surprised Mab could be doing some light reading at a time like this. She understood the desire for distraction but she couldn’t imagine being able to concentrate on anything that was so trivial in the current context. 

"Oh well." Mab said shutting the book close and setting it aside once more, wriggling her toes as if to get the blood circulation going again. "Hardly a thing left to do to prepare." She looked toward a plastic patio table on the side that was laden with scrolls and maps. "Might as well braid each other’s hair to pass the time."

 Bela’s eyebrow lifted high enough to nearly fuze with her hairline, “I’m going to assume you’re not being literal”, she drawled, sitting up with a small stretch. There really wasn’t anything else to do. She wasn’t going to get any more prepared for what lay ahead. No more practice or training  left that would do her any good. 

Still, she twined a strand of hair about a finger and eyed it idly, ‘Tempted to cut the lot off, anyway.” There was nothing like a multidimensional war to make a girl yearn for low maintenance, “Always in the way lately.”

If nothing else, that was a blaring signal of how much she’d changed over the last few years. 

"I am rather fond of my hair." Mab said mimicking  Bela’s motions and twirling a lock in her fingers. "I haven’t had it cut in so long."

She was vain, she had never hidden that, with all her pretty garments and elaborate hair-dos, the perfect nails and shiny jewelry. It all seemed so trivial yet it was a small comfort for Mab to have. 

She had stubbornly painted her nails on fingers and toes in black opalescence that gleamed with blue flashes (it matched her armour) and although she had forgone jewelry, she did have her opal hairpins ready to hold her hair on the morrow.

Fuck that. If they were dying they might as well go out in style. 

 There was an ornate mirror leaned up against one of the tent walls for the Queen’s use, and Bela caught a glimpse of her reflection in it as she sat back up. Jeans, tank top, hair that had dried in lazy waves and only a hint of makeup greeted her. She’d be lying if she said her appearance wasn’t still important to her, but her priorities had obviously shifted over the years. Hell, she was about to head into a very probably fatal battle with all the forces of darkness, why waste the mascara?

Her gaze lingered for just a second, thinking for a moment on how many mirrors, how many faces she could count her life in. She’d thought once that she’d feel terribly vulnerable, naked even without the armour that was her heels and lipstick and immaculately tailored wardrobe. But she didn’t, if anything something felt a little…tough about her at a glance. She liked it.

Bela turned away from the mirror, cracking her neck with a small stretch. If there was ever a time to be brave.

"So I’ve noticed", Bela replied, with a faint chuckle. She hadn’t meant it as an insult, but it was impossible to ignore. Mab liked to dress to the nines, and then some. Bela understood that well enough, she knew how potent a weapon one’s visage could be. Seduction, intimidation, deception, it didn’t matter, you could do a lot with a look. It was a weapon she’d wielded for most of her adult life, and it was completely useless here.

Mab didn’t mind if she was being called vain by her understudy. She liked looking good and it took no effort, not after millennia of doing these things. They were mostly automatic reactions now, braiding her hair into elaborate plaits and making sure every signle lace on her dress was intact. There were more to it than vanity. She was the Winter Queen. A mortal showing up sloppy was forgivable, expected even

But Mab showing up to battle less than pristine… She didn’t want to think what it would do to her army’s morale.

Mab thought on Bela’s previous words. “Has your hair been bothering you more lately?” she narrowed her eyes. 

Bela tucked an errand tawny strand behind her ear, shrugging a little,”I think it’s more I just don’t have the patience for it right now”,she gave a vague flick of her hand at the tent around them, “Have sort of had bigger things on my mind than packing my flatiron.”

Mab seemed satisfied with Bela’s answer and smirked a little, obviously something in her mind she still wasn’t ready to share. She shrugged, “I doubt it would have worked for you anyway. Your magic is quite potent as of late.” she eyed her up and down, “Drink your tea.”

 Bela scooped up the mug and took another sip of the cooling peppermint tea, it still tasted a bit off but she didn’t much care at the moment. Hoping to have satisfied Mab, she set it back down after a moment.

"I’ve been practicing", she admitting, "Storing up the power from some storms. Plus-a bit keyed up."

The inference was obvious, she’d been packing as much power as possible to the rings and chains she used as foci. Endurance was not her strong suit when it came to throwing offensive magic around. If she was going to last more than five minutes once the going got rough she needed reserves. 

"Blew out two streetlights yesterday, suppose I should keep it as a new record."

"Try and sleep." Mab ordered her eyeing her books. There was the one she was reading and then at least four more stacked by her bedpost. Fiction, light reading. She probably would finish at least two tonight, including the one she was half through as she couldn’t fall asleep, not with Bela in the tent. 

She laughed silently, it wasn’t like Bela would try and kill her. Hardly a reason for that when they were in the eve of battle and Mab’s death right now would probably mean they would have to meet an army with an unprepared Winter Queen who was even younger than Bela herself.

Still, old habits died hard and sleeping in the same room with anyone was something she had only managed to do with one person in her long, long life.

Bela sighed, leaning back against some pillows. She knew Mab was right, she needed sleep, but she doubted she’d find any tonight regardless of how hard she tried. 

Still, she could take a hint, and rolled to her feet. Her stomach roiled at the movement and she grimaced. Bloody nerves. She swallowed, looking over at Mab, “I’ll try”, she said, “…Can I ask you something?”

Mab stared.

"I already said you could and that I would answer." she said simply, wrapping the covers around her. Comfort. 

Bela swallowed, throat tight, “How do you see our chances tomorrow?” She asked bluntly, which was still a hell of a lot easier to get out then ‘how do my chances look tomorrow?’

Mab sighed deeply. “Honestly I do not know. There seems to be a dire attack brewing and as far as I am concerned our efforts need to be united with Summer.” she shook her head, “I just hope Titania will answer my call. Would be foolish not to. It is her world too.” 

"At least you’re honest", Bela sighed as well, looking at her grandmother intently. Well, grandmother was more a working title, it was more like great-great-great-grandmother slash boss. But there was something there between them that Bela thought seemed appropriate between a relative a few times removed. Maybe she was feeling sentimental because she was likely to die tomorrow, it certainly gave one perspective.

"Of course I am honest, why sugar coat it, I have no use for weakness." she said lazily, looking at the sky again that was getting darker by the hour. More stars had fallen from the sky. 387.

Bela hated the word family, but kin she could get behind, it insinuated a likeness more than an assumed bond. Maybe that was why she was here, hadn’t run for cover and hoped everyone else would save their reality for her.

"Your sister’s a crazy bitch", Bela remarked, with a tiny smirk, "But I don’t think she’s that crazy, and you can’t forget Sarissa."

She sighed louly and looked back at Bela. She had become one of her girls, the only one she hadn’t lost yet.

Plenty of time for that tomorrow. She reminded herself bitterly.

"Sarissa cannot do anything without Titania’s say."

 Bela chewed the inside of her lip a little, “I know, but she’s at least one voice of reason. And the Lady is not without sway.”

It was a hope they were both banking on, Mab was right, they needed Summer if they wanted a chance. She sighed, clueless to what Mab was thinking at that moment.

"Well. Died once already, it’s got to be easier the second time around."

"How was that?" Mab asked suddenly. She hadn’t intended to. She was preoccupied with counting and the question came to her lips on its own. She turned to look at Bela.  "Dying, I mean. I have only been to the brink." 

Well, for once there was something Bela knew that the Queen didn’t, she looked over at her curiously, and swallowed. 

"Wasn’t as quick as I’d hoped", she admitted, drawing her arms about herself unconsciously, "Didn’t hurt that badly-considering the circumstances."

She tried not to think too hard on what had been left of her when the hounds were done. The second one had opened her throat, and she hadn’t known anything more.  "What came after was- a different matter."

Mab froze.

She knew there was an afterlife, she had spoken with ghosts in the past and seen them crossing over to disappear forever. She had even brought her Knight back from the dead. Death was a spectrum, there was something called being ‘absolutely dead’ and ‘mostly dead’ but she had never thought of discussing it with someone who had been beyond the edges death.

See, being in a ‘mostly’ dead condition like the Knight had been after being shot and fallen in lake Michigan, was much like catching a nap, your body was still there but your spirit wasn’t. She had gone there herself momentarily and had been returned to her small, child broken body by the cold and the pain. But Bela had been absolutely dead. Body destroyed and mangled, soul sent to the seventh depth of hell.

She shuddered.

"Tell me about after." 

"Trust me", Bela replied softly, "You don’t want to know."

The majority of her centuries in Hell were still walled away from her memories to keep her from going completely insane, but that didn’t mean she didn’t remember. Couldn’t close her eyes and summon up the phantom sensation of heat and hooks and torment. 

Torture was different when it was being inflicted on your soul. There were no bodily responses to handle the pain or misery. There was no shock, no passing out, no respite. But the pain was different, as well, dull and deep. "There’s a reason when people try to describe the worst thing they’ve ever experienced, they say it’s like Hell."

"I have always been taught that there are worse things than hell. Oblivion for one matter. Now I am not so sure." Mab said as she fell back on her mattress, frustrated by the wait, not being able to do anything until it was time to march.

399.

When she next spoke her voice was little above a whisper, “Do you think she is in hell?” she asked softly, “Would she be punished for everything Nemesis made her do?”

Bela didn’t need to ask who Mab was talking about, nothing but her own children could make the Queen’s voice waver so. She’d never met Maeve herself, she’d come into the court’s employ after the Winter Lady was dead, but she knew the story well enough.

"No", she said firmly, "She wasn’t human. Small comfort but in that regard the rules are pretty strict."

Mab felt the chills riding up her spine, which was an awkward feeling since she didn’t feel the cold. Just gooseflesh erupting along her skin at Bela’s words.

There was afterlife, she knew. Did this mean that the Sidhe simply passed in oblivion? She thought of the teachings she had received when she was brought up with druidism. They spoke of  Tír na nÓg. Was there a heaven for her daughter? Her niece? She let out a shaky breath.

Would there be heaven for her?

She doubted that. Aurora might have had a chance in heaven, whatever heave there was for the Sidhe but not her Maeve. She loved her but she was vicious and twisted and liked to hurt people long before she had been afflicted.

As for Mab… She’d rather believe she would live forever. She had been alone anyway, all of her life, Winter helping not getting anyone close and whenever she had done so, it had ended in heartbreak.

Even her immortal child had been taken from her by the Angel of death and Sarissa… Sarissa was gone in Summer. It had been a while now, soon she would pose no difference from Aurora. Soon she’d be much more Titania’s daughter than Mab’s.

She realized she hadn’t spoken for a while then looked at Bela.

"Hell is here too." 

"It doesn’t have to be", Bela murmured, toying with a strand of hair idly. She looked up at the stars, indulging in a deep breath. She’d wondered many times if she’d end up back in Hell when it was all over. Her crossroads deal might have been over and done but that didn’t mean she was safe from Hell, didn’t mean there wasn’t corruption in her soul.

It was strange though, living on borrowed time. She was more desperate to live than she was afraid to die, it wasn’t so much a fear of the unknown as a desire for just, more. More time, more chances.

She didn’t have family, unless you counted Sarissa and Mab. She didn’t have children, or a partner, or even a lover on a consistent basis. She had, at best, playful acquaintances, but she didn’t have friends. She didn’t have a single place to call home, a real job, or anything resembling a ‘career’. Her life wasn’t really a life in the way most people might frame it, but she still would fight for it to the last breath. 

She closed her eyes, “Besides, Hell’s not really a place. It’s something that gets inside you, eats away and spreads until there’s nothing left.”

"We are saying the same thing." Mab frowned when Bela corrected her. "Hell is here for me but still I wish not to leave."

She had already told her how desperately she wanted to keep going. Perhaps pursue relationships she had never dared to because of her status and position and responsibilities. She ached for love. She admired it, longed for it. She had loved her children and their father.

And everything she loved had been taken away.

Would winning this battle mean the end of it all? It seemed like it. Her people had been preparing a ritual for five thousand years in Nevernever time to attempt and shut the gates. If they screwed up now…

Well, as her Knight would say… Hell’s Bells. 

"Fine", Bela sighed, too tired to argue, "Just semantics anyway." She rolled back down onto the cushions, curling on her side.

Her chest felt tight, with stress or worry or just the low ache of things undone. She didn’t want to die tomorrow.

"You’ll make it", she drawled, a grim chuckle in her voice, "Anything that killed you would have to be meaner than you, and we both know that’s not possible." The words were punctuated with a tilted eyebrow and small smile to take the edge off of them

"How have you managed to crawl your way this close to me, mortal?" she asked in the same bored tone, with the same small smile. Bela chuckled softly, “I’m a thief, getting into places I shouldn’t is my specialty.” Still, there was something in those words that made her want to hide away an almost bashful smile. Mab had kept her distance from her humanity for Winter’s sake but mortals had always had an appeal on her and she always liked to keep company to them. It had been a while since she had been to have a mortal weekend. It must have been since before Sarissa became the Summer Lady. 

"When this is done," she said abruptly, "When we are done with this battle. I am taking you to Disneyland." 

"Disneyland, really?" She laughed, raising an eyebrow, "I’m not six." Ignoring or the moment the severe unlikelyhood of her still being alive to even consider such a trip after tomorrow. 

"Oh cease talking, Disneyland is wonderful. I had fun there with—" she trailed off. She had been with Sarissa, was it that bad that she wanted to spend a nice mortal weekend somewhere?

She eyed at Bela with a very strange look, up and down, focusing mainly on the shape of her face. "Perhaps I should have another child when the battle is done." she mused out loud.

Bela chuckled a little at Mab’s reaction, she couldn’t quite imagine the Winter Queen at  _Disneyland_  of all places. The mental image of Mab in one of those ear hats would be enough to bring on giggles in any other circumstance.

She didn’t notice the way the woman’s eyes lingered on her features, temporarily miles away. Hell, if they both lived through tomorrow she’d take her up on the offer, just because.

"Hmm?" Bela said, suddenly realising she’d been spoken to again and snapped her attention back to Mab.

"Oh nothing important." Mab said absently, getting out of bed, gown swishing as she stretched. She released her hair from hair ponytail holder and started french-braiding it close to her skull, preparing it for the helm she would need to wear on the morrow.

"I was just thinking out loud. Finish your tea and have something to eat, child." 

Bela watched as the impressive length of white hair was released and cascaded across the Queen’s back. She sat up again, taking a sip of tea with a small shake of her head, “Not hungry, nerves have been making me a bit queasy, actually”, she sighed. 

The mint tea had gone cold, but she didn’t care, she almost liked it better that way, the flavour sharper.

"Hard to imagine you with a baby", she mused quietly, obviously she knew Mab had two daughters,but still the mental image was hard to conjure up. Hell, what did she know about what a decent mother looked like? She hadn’t had one. 

"I had a son once too. He became a King of Thrace."  Mab was looking away, fingers working swiftly through her mass of silken locks. "Many children have been attributed to Names I have used in the past but I’ve only had three." her tone was nonchalant but there was something close to pain in her eyes.

"There was once more that could have been in the past decade but it did not take. Perhaps for the best." she confessed. She had never told anyone, not even the man responsible. When she had discovered the pregnancy had been lost, she had been unable to decide if she had been relieved or saddened by the situation. She still was unsure.

"A lot of people are hard to imagine as parents." she shrugged, "You for example…" 

Bela sighed, settling down onto the makeshift couch as Mab spoke, at the last comment she let out a small chuckle,

"With good reason, I shouldn’t be left responsible for a goldfish, let alone a child."

She took another sip of tea, musing, she’d only thought about the possibility once. She’d had a scare when she was nineteen, forced to consider the selfishness of having a child she would orphan before it’s fifth birthday. But it had been a false alarm, and she hadn’t concerned herself with the idea since.

"Not that it was ever terribly likely, there were some…complications when I was young. Muddied the waters in that regard." She didn’t need to explain further to Mab, she knew. 

"I am aware." Mab said firmly. She knew all well about what kind of monster Bela's father had been, unlike her own caring father who had died protecting her. Not that it had done her any good.

Mab started finishing with her hair. She had braided it in elaborate plaits that would easily fit in her helmet and had also braided knot magic in the locks. Small charms but helpful in the heat of battle.

"I have never told you this but I had been subjected to a similar hardship." she confessed. "Before Winter." 

Bela finished off her tea and set the mug aside with a hesitant breath. 

"I-guessed as much. Enough was said that one- could make the connections. I’d hoped I was being cynical." She smoothed her own hair back with a hand, contemplating doing the same on the morrow, it did get in the way.

"It is one of the things I have only told a few persons." Mab said waving her hand dismissively. Titania knew of course. She counted. Her daughters’s father had guessed it as well but she had never confirmed it. And her Knight had found out at one point. Harry Dresden had eventually come around to see beyond his stubbornness that she didn’t want to harm him. A deep understanding and friendship had grown but War had gotten in the way and noone had time for social calls. Bela had been her only company lately. Not that she minded. The woman was kin, she was more Winter than she realized, than she probably wanted to be. "I donned my mantle shortly after." 

"Well", Bela murmured, "I suppose I shall feel special, then", it was the only way she knew to react to the revelation of something so personal from a woman who gave away so little. 

Still, she supposed she was much the same. Guarded, wary, never showing weakness unless she absolutely needed to. As much time had passed and as far as she’d come that was still true of her nature, probably always would be. 

Mab poured another cup of coffee and held the warm mug between her palms. She had been alone for a long time. Perhaps she could seek something more personal after this battle. It had been quite a while and the mug felt oddly comforting in her hands, as if the warmth was coming from another person.

She had some affection for a few people in her life although she wouldn’t try anything with any of them, every single one of them being either mortal or taken or simply more a friend than a love interest. All her relationships seemed to rely largely on carnal desire in the past century, being to afraid to approach anyone after the heartbreak she had suffered when her daughters’s father had died.

"Would you have a child if you had the chance?" Mab asked her softly, "Regardless of who the father would be, would it be a burden?"

Bela felt something twist in her chest, and she looked up at Mab, curiosity tinged with trepidation on her features. The subject was clearly making her uncomfortable. She paused to gather herself; she had thought about it from time to time. She knew she wasn’t the type, nurturing wasn’t in her nature, and she didn’t have a gentle heart. All her life she’d only had to look out for herself, as no one else ever would, and the thought of someone small and helpless needing her like that was terrifying. Terrifying because it seemed so easy to fail.

Still. Her crossroads deal was nil, and with the latent emergence of her magic…she was looking at a much longer life than she’d ever imagined. And she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t afraid of being alone for the rest of it. Lovers were easy to find, but anything more than that was- well. She was difficult to life with, and even harder to love.

"I-I don’t know", she admitted, "Sort of a moot point now, anyway."

"Moot? Are you so determined to die out there, child?" Mab grinned getting back into bed and under the covers.

She had grabbed the heavy comforter this time. It was heavy and warm and almost always had a soporific effect on her but she didn’t want to sleep now. Still it was great for comfort and she huddled within it leaving only her face and hands out. ”You are versed in the Art now, it can be terribly lonely without someone to share it with. Not necessarily a lover.”

"No, just trying to be realistic", Bela sighed lightly, "Never been one for the standing and fighting parts of life." Especially when one could escape through the airvents. "I’m used to being alone", she admitted, before casting an eye over to Mab, "Why the sudden interest in my love life? Or lack thereof?"

"Making conversation." she shrugged but only the movement of the comforter indicated the gesture. She sipped on her mug. "If you do not enjoy this conversation simply find something to talk about. It is still just after midnight." she said looking at the sky above.

401.

Bela wasn’t sure she bought it, but relaxed anyway, “Bit hard to focus on smalltalk with dawn just a few hours away”, she admitted. She didn’t feel ready, doubt she ever would. She hadn’t been made for war, or bravery.

Mab drained her second coffee. “I can see empty night approaching.” she said glancing at the sky again then reaching up securing the flap on a velcro strip. “I should try and get some rest, there is no way to know how long this will go on for. And we march in five hours.”

Bela swallowed, nestling down deeper into the pile of cushions she’d curled up in. A chill ran down her spine at the very mention of marching, of war. She supposed on the dawn she’d discover exactly what she was made out of, what she was capable of, and that was chilling in it’s own right.

She leaned her chin on her forearm, closing her eyes, “…Mind if I stay?”, she asked quietly.

Mab pursed her lips. She really would have issues sleeping if Bela stayed but then again she couldn’t just leave her on her own. Not tonight. She let out a sigh.

"Go take a walk, fifteen minutes and come back then." she instructed, "I should have fallen asleep by then." 

Bela arched an eyebrow, but didn’t argue. She only chuckled, with a small shake of her head. Now wasn’t the time to poke fun at the queen’s eccentricities. She rose, brushed herself off, and exited into the night air.

The walk was calming, in it’s own way, to see the campfires burning and know she wasn’t the only one kept awake this night. And when morning eventually came she was back on the pile of cushions in Mab’s tent, curled up like a housecat.  Mab had fallen asleep quite quickly and hadn’t stirred when Bela had returned to her tent. The wards were fairly elaborate but Bela had been granted an access mark weeks ago.

Mab had woken up at dawn and made her way to the other side of the tent silently to don her armor.

It was black scale mail, made from genuine dragonscale so dark it almost seemed to adsorb the light around it. It had titanium reinforcements and there were sidhe charms and svartalf technology incorporated in it, as well as carved runes that glowed an eerie icy blue against the material. She sheathed her longsword, goblin made and terrible in the same colours with her armor and finally put on her helmet, tucking in her braid before walking over to Bela.

"Wake up, child." she said. "It’s time."


	2. Chapter 2

 

Bela slept a deep and dreamless sleep, so much that she didn’t hear Mab rising and stirring until the voice sounded cooly in her ear. She sat up, momentarily transfixed by the rather intimidating figure standing over her. She brushed a messy strand of hair behind her ear and nodded, “I’ll get ready”, she said, getting to her feet.

She returned to where she had been technically staying to dress. Mab had sent her down to the armoury in Arctic Tor a week before to find something suitable, and she’d had to argue with the little imp fitting her for an hour before he stopped piling plate on her. She wasn’t supernaturally strong, or even much of a fighter by mortal standards, her best chance would to stay light on her feet. In the end she’d been left with an arrangement of leather and scale, linked together in sections of maille that reminded her of her foci. Never one for phallic metaphors, Bela had rings and chains that traced around her limbs and form in ladder-like patterns, each link painstakingly charged with power. It sat next to her skin, over her heart, pulsing lightly with magic. The glaive she held felt as alien as the armour, the bladed short spear was the perfect balance between a staff and sword but still. 

She was a creature of silk and gunpowder and lies that had somehow ended up on a literal battlefield with a bunch of faeries. Well at least her life had never been dull. She slung the weapon onto her back, and returned to Mab’s tent, stomach churning. 

Mab had taken her to the rest of the army and led her to stand next to the other battle mages in her army.

The Winter Knight was there as well, in full plate made from a material though so bendy and flexible that felt as cloth despite being as hard as steel. Longsword sheathed on his back, staff in hand, he wore a grim expression, his hair hadn’t been cut in a while and was held in a tight ponytail at the base of his neck, a trimmed beard framing his features.

He had always had sharp features but many days with little hours to sleep had accentuated that. His warm brown eyes looked colder than they ever had and his usual dry sarcasm and razor sharp wit had turned to a dismal cynicism.

On his side was Lady Molly, white hair, french braided similar to Mab’s and rolled carefully into coils at the base of her neck. Wands in hand she was blinking in and out of visibility, testing her veils and illusions.

Bela slid off the back of the pucca that had brought her to the front, her fingers tangling in it’s mane as she dismounted. The sturdy little sidhe horse whickered and nipped at her shoulder, and she swatted it on the nose in return. “Stop it”, she hissed at the little beast, and she’d swear later it rolled its uncanny yellow eyes at her.

She looked over at Dresden and Molly, both she knew in passing from the court, and then some. Hell, she’d been Dresden’s handler on an assignment or two. They both seemed older and sharper than she remembered, even though she doubtless saw them only a week prior.

Bela reached for the power in the chains that wove around her body, just a touch as if to assure herself it was still there. When it came to magic, she was nowhere near the powerhouses those two were, even sans mantles. Just like her, Bela’s magic wasn’t explosive or flashy or crushing, it was subtle, quiet and had to be wielded with pinpoint precision. Thankfully she’d always had good aim.

In another life she’d put a bullet in a man’s shoulder and said as much the same, what she wouldn’t do for the comfort of a pistol now. 

Soldiers bent their knees as Mab passed by them but she waved them up absently as she approached her Lady.

The Winter Lady curtsied as Mab approached while the Knight did a kneeling bow, hand on staff  before Mab gestured him up.

"You both know Ms Talbot and her abilities." She told them, "Make sure you put her skills to good use."

She then switched to High Sidhe and said something to Molly whose eyes widened but nodded promptly.

Bela’s ears perked up as once again Mab turned to the sidhe tongue, but as before, she couldn’t make it out. The words passed out of her mind like a dream upon waking, dust, insubstantial. 

Mab started gathering power between her hands creating three  baseball sized clouds passing one to each of them

"A tiny amount of Will will make this into a floating tempest cloud. You can use it to attack by air." she explained to Bela. The other two had used them often and simply tucked their clouds in their cloak pockets.

And then sounded a horn.

 She swallowed, steeling her nerve and took the cloud from Mab, it crackled happily in her palm. Tiny sparks danced up her arms and throat as she tucked it away, the electricity running over her skin like dew. And she found her strength in that buzz of energy, of life, pure and vibrant. The sky was coming down on the night she was born, rain had speckled her hair when the crossroads demon had found her, and lightning had split the sky when the first hound made it through the door and opened her throat. 

The power she’d learned to nurture wasn’t the rawness of fire or earth, it was more subtle, drawn in whisps of wind. Unpredictable, prone to strike the smallest of targets with devastating results.

There’d even been a time when she’d used the name Gale.

Thunder sounded on the horizon, and with the whispers of a storm crackling in her hair, Bela turned to see the dark line of an army approaching.

Mab reminisced on the book she had been reading the night before and the films Bela had mentioned and a little smile quirked on her lips.

She had been to those films with Sarissa, the irony of a Faerie Queen and her changeling daughter going to watch a movie about elves and wizards and monsters too good to ignore. She recalled there was a battle in one of the films where the protagonists were barricaded in a fortress while thousands upon thousands of monsters marched against them.

She took to the skies and let her gaze roam above her army.

She let her head fall back and made a gesture, much like that in yoga where you supposedly greet the sun and as her hands moved upwards so her armor started lighting up, runes glowing, switching on softly as her hands reached her face.

Her eyes blackened all through the scleras, her skin clinging tighter to her bones, making her face look -not ugly- but gaunt and angular and more Sidhe than she ever looked. Her eyebrows also went black and had she not been wearing a helmet one would see that her hair had turned ebony black as well.

Another horn sounded in the distance and Mab turned to see a golden mass approaching them, a blinding light leading them towards her own.

And then the brilliant radiance was by her floating on a puffy white cloud and she could see her sister flying by her. Mab inclined her head with a wicked grin on her face.

"I thought you were not coming, sister mine." Mab called in High Sidhe, causing her twin to smirk. She looked exactly like Mab did, even their armor matched only Titania’s was dark gold, glowing with green runes and instead of a short she was armed with a bow fashioned out of the antler’s of a stag.

Oberon’s bow.

"I could not let this scum take what is rightfully mine." Titania called back, "It is my world too, remember?" Then the Summer Queen extended her hand to her sister who took it and squeezed it tight for the first time in a millennium.

And then the Outsiders charged.

* * *

 

Bela looked around her at the lines, high sidhe and wyldfae alike, smattered with a handful of changelings here or there. The ranks of winter were a roiling mass of cool blues and silvers, stretching out like shoals of fish from the hilltop where Mab had gathered them.  Beyond them she could see the greens and golds of Summer converging, and to the east there were the banners of the Jade Court, and on the wind came the yipping bugles of the Fox Clans.

It seemed for a moment that all of the world’s supernatural powers had gathered here, for this moment, for a last stand against a common enemy. Bela felt the first rush of adrenaline scald it’s way through her veins, saw the muscles of the oily black pucca beside her tense in anticipation. Down the line, a sidhe lord was barely holding back his hounds with a whispered word. The cu sith, rangy grey limbs and pale eyes with too many irises within them whimpered and bayed with the need to explode onto the field. 

Overhead scores of ravens swirled like ink in water, seeming to almost coalesce into human shapes before dispersing again. Mab took Titania’s hand, the moment seeming to last forever. 

And then everything seemed to explode into focus. The lines of the two armies converged faster than she ever would have thought possible, closing the distance of what had appeared to have been miles in a matter of seconds. The outsiders cut a dark line of shapes that were neither one thing or the other. Every one of them unique and yet somehow twisted in the same fashion, features that never quite appeared natural or like they were meant to be together.

Bela could have sworn she hadn’t drawn breath, hadn’t moved an inch, but in a clash, the two forces met. There was an actual sound, almost like the rending of metal, and after she’d think yes- the tearing of worlds. 

Then chaos. 

The next few moments were shrouded in an enormous blast of noise, darkness and despair. The psychic attacks unleashed by the Outsider forces were nothing new for the Winter Sidhe but had taken a toll on other Supernatural nations in the front line.

The Summer tree golems were hit the hardest, turning yellow, withering and falling apart in ashes as Winter’s animated snow Ogres were trying to get into defensive position. Three battalions had all but been slaughtered during the first assault, the desperation spread by the mind blasts too dire for them to even offer resistance.

But then came the Winter Sidhe, side by side with their Summer cousins. A silver mass of terribly beautiful creatures, armed with swords and bows and magic, cut through the Outsider formation like a hot knife into butter while the wounded found assistance in the able hands of Summer medics.

Mab dared to breathe for a moment.

It was going well, all too well and that made her suspicious. She glanced over at her sister who was flying over the field casting endurance spells and minor healings here and there as she concentrated on shielding her amry from the most of the mind attacks.

It shouldn’t be this easy.

__You are right, my Queen._   _ sounded a jeering voice in her mind, making her stand very very still for a moment like she was a statue. Nemesis.  _This looks too easy, let me up the odds._

The ground cracked and suddenly where previously had been most of Summer’s healing forces now gaped an abyssal chasm.

Summer’s healers…

Sarissa.

Mab didn’t even register the tentacles that burst out of the unfathomable depths, her vision had been distorted, blurry.

Her child.

Her last living child.

She screamed in rage, taking her tempest cloud higher as Nemesiss’ cackles jarred against her mind, Willing energy between her palms to begin gathering a storm.

Bela had gotten boxed in with a contingent of Winter  hunters and Wyldfae almost instantly. Hounds, grey and lithe as quicksilver shadows burst from the ranks about her, rushing forward to meet the attack with fang and claw. Something in her shuddered at the sound of their cries, something that still remembered the feeling of hot fangs closing about her throat.

But that isn’t something she can pay service to now, isn’t a fear she can let live in her heart. There’s no time for fear, or hurt, or anything but action and reaction. She twists out of the way of a claw swipe from an Outsider that had barreled past the Winter line, striking out at the heavy tendons of it’s legs with her blade as it passed. She misjudged the distance and the blow did little but scratch a thin wound along one bony ankle. 

The thing was massive, over eight feet, and had more limbs than was necessary by a few. It flailed, three clawed hands, all six of them reaching out for anything it could reach. A sidhe warrior who wasn’t quick enough was struck across the chest and went down in a spray of silvery red. Bela scrambled back, barely ducking a second swing from one of the shorter arms as it came hurtling over her head. She steadied herself and thrust the glaive upwards at just the right moment. The Outsider struck the sidhe blade at it’s wrist with all the force of it’s swing behind it. 

As it turns out, faerie steel is sharp. 

Although the strike threw her off balance, Bela was treated to an ear splitting screech and the sight of a prehistoric looking claw hitting the ground, sans the arm it was attached to. The Outsider turned it’s attention away from the sidhe who were striking at it with spear and blade, and looked right at her. 

Bela had enough time to feel her stomach drop before the the earth roiled beneath them all and she struck the earth hard as her feet went out from under her. Stars exploded in her vision as her head snapped back, and through the splatter of colour she had only an instant to focus on the beast bearing down on her. 

It didn’t find it’s target. A glossy mass of muscle struck it in the chest, barreling the Outsider almost entirely off it’s four legs. The little pucca reared back in fury, striking with sharp metallic hooves and entirely unequine fangs. A sidhe lord saw the opportunity and drove a spear deep into the outsider’s flank. The projectile hissed and smoked as it buried itself into the creature’s unearthly flesh, the skin beginning to peel away from the wound. The outsider howled, and in it’s throes managed to get two hands onto the pucca harrying it’s flanks. Bela struggled back to her feet, and got a perfect view as the Outsider managed to grasp both ends of the pucca’s jaw and…tore.

The pucca’s lower mandible came away with a sizable strip of neck and tendon, it’s last furious whinney coming out in a wet gurgle as the cords of it’s throat were split away from it’s body. 

She didn’t watch, clenching a fist and calling on the power stored in her foci, Bela whirled away from the slaughter and fell back into the rank pressing forward. 

It seemed like hours but it had all happened in the span of at most five minutes. Five minutes and her child was dead, most of their healing forces were dead and there was the spawn of an old one rising from the depths of the earth.

She had a glimmer of hope that Sarissa could have been elsewhere, maybe helping in another part of the field when she saw it.

There was a beam of light that shot up from the pit right as tentacles started growing larger. Just a small green and gold beam vaguely resembling the shape of a woman, hovering just about the edge of the pit before it coalesced into the shape of a large eagle. It floated for a moment, twirling over the chasm then shot directly into the mass of the Sidhe of Summer.

There was a new Summer Lady.

Mab felt her eyes fill with tears once more and she stubbornly blinked rapidly to clear her vision as she let Winter wash over her mind and body numbing the pain, taking away all her emotions, not letting her feel anymore as she kept the gathering storm that was coalescing between her hands.

Her black bottomless eyes shone.

She was the Guardan of this world and no one was laying their filthy hands -or tentacles- on it.

She unleashed the storm with the fury of a thousand hurricanes, trashing the Outsider forces as Winter’s fury soared through their ranks leaving her Sidhe unscathed.

And then the Horror had risen to its full height.

Mab had dealt with such creatures before, however none had been so massive, save the one that she had witnessed beyond the Gates and still that one seemed dwarfed in front of this Horror. She had been powerless at that instance but her Knight had brought an entire cavern crushing down the Horror effectively burying it under tons of stone.

But there was no cavern here. Not even a hill. Her gaze roamed over the grey battlefield, flat and barren and cold and in the distance in the thick of battle a brilliant blaze of fire and ice spreading havoc, terror and death forcing them to retreat.She couldn’t help it, her mouth curled up in an impish smile, her canines glinting in the otherworldly light.

_ / _Knight Mine_ / _

She searched the silver line that connected her mind to her Knight sending her Will through calling the Winter Knight by her side.

He was by her in less than a minute, Wizard staff in hand, its runes glowing icy blue, eyes darkened from brown to black much like hers had, His dark cloak billowing in the wind as he floated next to her, inclining his head swiftly, expecting orders.

"The Starborn is needed, Sir Knight."

* * *

 

Time didn’t exist.

There was only the white noise of battle buzzing in her ears and the steps. One, two, thee. Duck, parry, strike for the knees. Four, five, Six. Dodge, roll, decapitate. Seven, eight. Keep moving, keep breathing, don’t get hit.  A dance. 

She’d had ballet classes, in another life. And in another life she laughed and turned up her nose at those who went through life machetes first.

_ If you could see me now _ , boys, an idle thought purred through her mind, the only coherant part of the thrum of adrenaline that raced through her. Her section of Winter’s vanguard pushed forward into the Outsider lines, a spear of force driving into the heart of the enemy forces. The surviving hounds swirled about her flanks, leaping forward in threes and fours to go for the legs of the enemy, trying to bring them down for the sidhe infantry  to finish off. 

A contingent of dryads, their ghostly birchbark skin white against the masses of armour around them, encircled an Outsider the size and vague shape of a prehistoric ground sloth. The creature tore furrows through the earth with its long talons, eyes and mandibles that were more at home on a spider clicking and blinking furiously. The dryads, their slim, sexless forms rooted hard where they stood, and reached forward with every stretching arms of wood and vine. The Outsider struggled but was quickly tangled in the masses of introweaving branches tangling about it’s legs. 

Bela got a fleeting glimpse of those spidery branches bursting from the creature’s back like pale arching ribs, heard it’s death wail as thorn and twig thrust in it’s many eyes and out again, and then she had passed the grisly scene, a waist height cu sith panting by her side. 

She saw the trap before anyone else appeared to. The break in the enemy’s lines hadn’t been an accident, and already their forces were beginning to circle in, to cut off the Winter forces from the rest of the army and surround them. Swearing under her breath, Bela reached for the power in her foci, in the chains that wound about her beneath the armour. There wasn’t any time for subtlety, and she all but ripped the energy out of a stretch of links, nearly losing her grip on it as something like a bulldog the size of a minivan rushed at her.

She twisted out of it’s path, holding the magic as if on a tether around her, and trying to feed more into it from the chains. The power of the storm crackled in rage at being contained, and twisted around her like an irritated serpent. crackles of blue electricity danced up and down her arms, before joining the tiny maelstrom and adding to it’s pressure and power. 

Bela didn’t remember grabbing the sidhe swordsman by her side and ordering him to cover her, but she must have, because the blast of fire that came from the bulldog thing’s second mouth was blocked by a cold shield of magic, rather than taking her head off. 

The trap sprang shut, Bela dropped into a crouch. The swordsman’s charred body struck the ground beside her.

She slammed a palm down onto the earth before her, and let the storm go. Wet, howling wind shot through the ranks of the outsiders trapping the vanguard, with force enough to knock smaller beasts off their feet. But it was the electricity that brought with it the killing  power, it rocketed through the path she’d sent it on with enough power to turn the sand to glass. And with it, neatly cleared a corridor through the enemy’s lines, leaving dazed and dead smoking on the earth. 

Bela had about three seconds to try and still her spinning had and take a victory breath when the terrain itself betrayed them again. 

* * *

 

Harry Dresden had never wanted to be the Winter Knight.

He had firmly believed that coming into Mab’s service he would be turned into a mindless thug. A monster just like his predecessor had been, raping, killing, bullying.

Harry hated bullies.

As the years had passed and he found himself realising that Mab did not intend to turn him into a mindless drone like Slate had been. Slate had been mostly Maeve’s Knight anyway, just like Fix had been Lily’s. He had never connected with Sarissa or Titania after Lily’s death.

Harry was Mab’s Knight. Through and through.

It didn’t matter how much he liked Molly or how much he had tried to deny it for years, that Mab practically owned him. He had even dared to defy her openly - although not in front of her court or other vassals. He was stubborn, not stupid - and demanded that she would not dare to change him.

The thing was, Mab never wanted to. Had she wanted an automaton she could have picked simply any able-bodied Knight right from the street. What Mab needed was exactly that defiance, that stubbornness, that quick mind that questioned everything.

And of course she also needed him because he was a Starborn.

This year he was closing a decade in Mab’s service and it had been about a year since it had occurred to him to ask her questions.  He had asked her about what it meant to be a starborn, about the Outsiders, about the mantles… She had explained everything, thoroughly and in detail and Harry had finally began to see Mab’s purpose, her role and the fact that everything she was doing applied to that purpose. And they had even started becoming friends. If he could dare to call the Queen of Air and Darkness his friend. 

And now he was here, by her side at the Gates, fighting monsters from another dimension.

Mab had placed her hands on his shoulders and he had almost flinched away from the touch just by habit but she had imbued him with Winter’s might, sending the fatigue away, washing away the cuts and bruises, giving him the physical boost he would need against the Horror.

And Harry started gathering Will.

Mab had a vague idea of what was going on on the ground through her mantle’s link to Molly. She could tell they had lost about three thousand sidhe in the first wave of the attack. Three thousand lives flickered out just like that. Like blowing out a candle.

She looked over at her Knight, her heart swelling at the way he worked his magic. The amounts of energy he could manipulate after years under her training had increased immensely and he was not exactly a weakling to begin with making him a sight to behold.

Titania flew close to them as well, gathering a tiny sun in her hands in order to release it into the Horror’s maw. She still had not forgiven Dresden about her daughter but this day all grudges were put aside. Today they fought for reality.

And then Mab saw the crossbow.

* * *

 

Bela had no way of knowing that the first tremor had swallowed up many of Summer’s ranks, any more than she knew how close she was to danger when she second had rocked her nearly odd her feet. There was nothing but the ground, and the blood, and unholy shrieking cries of things dying and things that had never been truly alive. She burned a path before her. Lightening crackled and swirled about her as she released it from the metal links, bit by bit, lashing out at anything that got too close.

She knew her concentration was failing, she didn’t have the kind of staying power it took to keep a working going for this long under this much stress. Her shields were acceptable at best, and they were failing her now. She was finding cover among their ranks, but it wasn’t enough, she was slowing down by the minute. 

She barely had time to react when a black thing that was too large to move so fast burst through the line, throwing winter footmen to and fro like some hideous great rhinoceros. Bela got the glaive up seconds before it hit her.

She’d never been hit by a car, although she’d seen it happen. Seen a taxi run a red light and slam into  a drunk crossing too slowly. Seem the way his body rolled up onto the hood and then fell aside like so much meat. She felt the two foot long blade sink into the thing’s flesh, and for a second imagined that it was over, but it was too big, too heavy to stop, it’s momentum too great.

Bela felt the handle of the weapon shatter and she was thrown aside. Pain blazed on impact as she slid and landed hard on one side. She couldn’t even be sure what she struck, in the chaos there was nothing but motion and noise. She struggled to her feet, narrowly avoiding being crushed as bodies fell around her. A glance reported blood running down the out side of her leg, a glimpse of splinters where bits of the weapon’s shaft had been driven through her armor’s gaps and into her hip. Didn’t matter. She could still walk, there wasn’t time to-

The ground opened up with a sound that was like every ounce of agony spilt that day had coalesced into one awful voice. A crack tore between the two small hills and simply began to swallow everything sloping down towards it. Entire sections of army just disappeared, as several small fissues exploded otuward from the first and the loose earth began to crumble in. 

There wasn’t time, everything around her just fell away. 

A gust of wind caught Bela and pulled her close to the Winter Lady. Molly shouted something at her but it was lost in the fury of the screams and shouts. She gestured showing her the tempest cloud at her feet along with a mental message sent straight to Bela’s mind.

_ ~Take your cloud and go to Mab, You are better off up there raining down lightning anyway.~ _

Molly then turned to the enemies again, creating her strobe light illusions, spreading confusion and disarray.

Mab had never seen  _ flying _  Outsiders before. The creature had bat-like wings and a bat-like face but the rest of it was humanoid and it was holding a crossbow aimed directly at her Knight.

"DRESDEN!" she called, her voice resonating in the wind, "BEHIND YOU!"

Harry had been busy building an ice cage around the Horror. The might of Winter numbed and made the massive Outsider slow and woozy and had just enough time to deflect the bolt and set the Bat on fire he called a thanks to Mab then continued building the cage. He was getting tired though. He had already been going non-stop and he had begun wavering and he just closed his eyes for a few seconds.

When he next opened them he was falling, his cloud scattered. Falling too fast for either Titania or Mab to catch him in time.

She’d been sliding, slipping through loose earth and falling bodies and struggling for purchase through the daze of the strike she’d taken. She didn’t see what pulled her away from the edge but didn’t waste any time getting back to her feet. Blood was running in her eye and she wiped it away without even a spare thought to how she’d gotten cut. A shape rushing in from the edge of her vision was lit up with blue fire even before she fully spotted it.

_ Not today _ , something growled from the deep recesses of her thoughts,  _ I’m not going to bloody well die today _ . 

She caught a glimpse of white and saw the Winter Lady only a few paces away, hands full with the battle, but Bela almost could swear she was speaking.  Their eyes met for a split second and the words erupted into her head, and Bela was able to give her a small nod of agreement before she was back on the defensive. The area where Molly was standing was cloaked in flashing lights and she disappeared within it instantly. 

Bela scooped up a spear from the ground, surely dropped by someone who wasn’t about to miss it, and used the point to keep the space about her clear while she pulled out the cloud and whispered a word to it. The swirling nexus of air and water twined about her ankles and then expanded. She was glad the enchantment was already arranged, her energy was waning and it only took a tiny bit of will before it pushed upwards, pulling her with it, and in a few seconds she was out of reach of even the taller Outsiders. 

Being out of the melee on the ground was- well. She had a second to take in the sheer vastness of the destruction, of the wounds in the earth weeping corruption and unknowable evil. But time was a luxury that had no place in war, and she instantly began gathering lightning from her reserves. 

It was the yell of a familiar name that broke her concentration. The ball of electricity she was molding shot down to earth in a crackle of fire, but she didn’t see where it struck. Her attention was above her, where much higher up other clouds were circling about like vultures over the killing field. She was only a few metres above it all, she saw him fall.

Time. 

Just enough for this.

Just enough time to get her sense together, to reach out to the winds and air spiraling around the falling form and  _ pul _ l them sharply towards her with as much force as she had. 

Harry was sure he was a goner.

He found himself laughing as he fell. Cackling really, probably in the bouts of hysteria as he crazily thought that Mab wouldn’t be able to bring him back this time, try as she might.

Then he hit something soft.

Seriously the ground shouldn’t be allowed to be  _ that _  soft. Unless he was already dead thus unable to feel pain.

But no. His ribs still ached, his head still throbbed and he was still awfully tired and oh the surface he had fell upon was so soft he could just fall asleep. Fall…

That’s right Dresden, you were falling asleep that’s why you bungee jumped into the maw of a Horror without a cord. He shook his head to clear it then reached in his cloak and down the contents of a sports bottle. It smelled bad and tasted worse but the potion worked and Harry felt more awake than anything. He looked around him and saw Bela steering the cloud in determination. He got up on his feet.

"Hey thanks." he called  giving her a thumbs up, "Get back up, I have business to finish."

Bela gave him an eyeroll at the flippant thumbs up, it felt oddly comforting to be annoyed at someone in the midst of this.

"Yes well, you’re the teacher’s pet, I’d never hear the end of it if I let you die", she responded over the roar of the battle, before doing as she was told and sending the cloud higher up to where the Queens were doing their work.

* * *

 Mab had seen the Knight falling and had lost her breath momentarily. She still needed him, needed him for the ritual and everything was going to oblivion.

And then… The he wasn’t falling anymore flying rapidly to her side again.

"DO IT, MAB." he yelled and Mab immediately turned and called her sister, flew to her and grabbed her wrist.

"It’s time." she told her. 

Titania stared at Mab, her eyes wide and white all through the scleras, an obvious contrast to her twin. She nodded and pulled Mab in a tight embrace.

Mab tensed. He had not expected the hug but she wrapped her arms around her sister tightly then pulling back.

They both moved in perfect synchronization, like a choreographed dance. They raised their hands to the heavens as stars rained rapidly from the sky, faster than they did before.

Flashing fire like a domino started pouring from all the sides of the field. It began in the end where they had started to march and on the exact oppsosite. 

Icy blue beacons lighting up, the one after the other to meet leaf green fire to form a perfect circle containing all of the field.

The Summer fire and Winter’s Frost met and burst into energy, sending a beam of light straight above to strike right in the chest of the Winter Knight.

Bela felt the crackle of raw power in the air around them and momentarily her stomach churned with uncertainty. She was in the eye of the storm now, and the sense of calm was as deceptive as anything. The dark shape of another flying creature swung in from the rest and she didn’t hesitate in sending  a nexus if lightning right into it’s slimy maw. Smoking, the corpse fell to earth.

In the moment of near peace, she felt the ache all down her side, the hot sting of blood in her eye and the way one wrist wasn’t responding the way it should. Her head spun with the effort but she reached into every last link of chain and tore the power from them, the power she’d drained from multiple storms and half the power lines in her neighborhood. With her waning concentration she pulling it together, forming a sphere of pure, tempestuous fury. Her cloud was right over the Outsider side of the army, and she held the storm as long as she could, before she felt her control waver. 

Then she dropped it. 

* * *

 

The energy blast was enough to cause the ice cage Harry had been building collapse on top of the Horror. Mab didn’t notice if the Horror had been buried or not or what else damage it had caused. her mind was on the ritual. The energy going through the Starborn. If this worked… If his life force indeed helped to stop them…

She dared not hope, dare not look away from Titania who stood by her in the same stance, eyes wide open, forehead prickled with sweat, despite the snow that had started falling all around.

His staff had fallen on Bela’s cloud when he was taken by the light. Harry had been struck by the beam and was now floating in mid-air, supported only by the green Summer fire and the blue Winter frost. His mouth was set in a silent scream, his eyes wide open, his hands stuck in a clawing position.

_ You’re killing him.  _ Nemesis’ voice in her mind sounded genuinely surprised,  _ You are killing your Starborn to stop  _ me _? _

Mab growled. She would not allow herself to be distracted. It only needed a little more now, simply a little—

From the corner of her eye she saw another bat-like creature closing in, then another, then another. It was a whole cloud of them. She turned and looked at her grand-daughter indicating she should defend but she could see the girl was getting exhausted. However she couldn’t let her concentration waver. She kept channeling Winter’s frosty beam through Harry with a look at her sister.

And then the bats started throwing fireballs and blasts of force.

She managed to dodge them all, extending a shield with her Will but there was little she could do about the force one that caught her on the head.

It didn’t damage her but knocked her helmet off, to tumble down into the darkness. The blast was followed by a fireball and Mab barely registered the smell of singed hair until she felt her head to be much lighter.

She glanced down and saw her long braid, burnt on one side falling softly, like a feather.

Her hair…

_ Well, at least her head wasn’t on fire.  _ She thought stubbornly continuing the ritual. Titania had taken up the chanting as they floated in a circle gathering power.

 

* * *

 

Bela slid down onto her knees, not trusting her balance with the way her head was spinning. She’d drained most of her reserves, whatever power she had left was going to have to come from her directly.

_ Buck up, Talbot. Think. You’ve probably got a concussion, you’ll be fine. Concentrate. _

She saw the incoming creatures, flapping towards them with an impossible silence. The shape of one coalesced into four, then five, and her nerve wavered. Lightning burst to life in her hand, a fist sized bundle of writhing blue fire.

She aimed carefully. 

A hole that a small car could have driven through smoldered through the leathery wing she’d pointed it at, and with a screech the crippled beast began to fall to earth. Three more met the same fate, as she focused on their membranous fragile wings. 

More dark shapes burst from the low clouds, and Bela felt her heart drop at what seemed to be an endless line of assailants. But the trio of winged shadows erupted from the cloud layer with a clap of thunder that momenttarily drowned out all else. 

They looked like eagles, great dark birds larger than any bird had ever been. Cold fire seemed to flicker in their eyes and glow from deep within their feathered breasts. They met the Outsiders in a clash of talon and shrieking, clacking beaks in a dogfight unlike anything before seen on this earth or the next. 

Bela felt the cloud beneath her dip, sinking a few feet downwards as her concentration and energy waned, but she tried to keep focus, to keep an eye out for anything else that would disturb the ritual above. 

* * *

 

Mab momentarily glanced at her Knight. He was still struck in the same position only now he had started turning transparent as if he was nothing more than a shade.

The ritual was almost over. It was now do or die.

Out of the side of her eye she saw the eagles and grinned broadly, so broadly that she almost missed the blast of force that was launched from the enemy lines on the ground directly towards the Knight.

No.

Oh no. If he died  _ now _  the ritual would be ruined. Five thousand years of preparation gone.

Just a little more.

She released the beam, sending it spinning off towards her Knight like a flinged rubber band. Titania had also released her beam and the light hit him hard from both ends, dropping to the ground like a lance and exploding with the power of three atomic bombs.

Mab had darted in the way of the blast the moment she released the beam. She slashed her hand in the air, grabbed Bela as well as she could (it was by the hair) and shoved her hard in the Way she had just opened, closing the Way before the woman could protest.

Damn this all, she was saving the last of her girls.

She glanced where her Knight had been and saw his body falling slowly.

She didn’t know if it was the blast that hit her, or simply exhaustion. All she knew was that suddenly she felt herself losing control of her body as the blast hit her and then she was falling as well.

And then there was darkness.

* * *

 

It all happened so fast. 

The fires, the force of it all, Bela was struggling to just keep the damn cloud up.  _ You are on a magic cloud hundreds of feet above a supernatural army in the war for reality, do not bloody pass out _ . 

White exploded in her vision as the blast went off, and she surely would have fallen backwards if strong, cool hands hadn’t grabbed her. 

A light, a shove, and she was falling.

_ Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in a big house in a dark forest. No matter how far she wandered, when she returned home there was still a wolf in her bed. One day she met a trickster in the forest, and he offered her a way out of the woods, but like all fables, it came with a price. So she ran and ran for years and years, but in the end it didn’t matter. The wolves came and ate her up. _

_ That’s how the first fairytale ended. _

_ And this- _

_ this? _

Impact. 

* * *

 

Harry was dying.

He knew he was dying. He had discussed long hours with Mab about what needed to be done, what the role of the Starborn would be and he had accepted that the possibility of his death to save reality, the people he loved.. Maggie… was a small price to pay.

He could see the stars falling all around, despite it still being daylight still.

How the fuck could he still see the stars during daylight?

And then suddenly it was night-time. An enormous round moon stood ominously above the field before the Outer Gates but there were no stars.

There were no stars at all.

Harry thought that this time round, dying didn’t suck this much. At least there was much less pain than being shot. The irony that he was dying for the same person he had died to avoid the first time did not escape him and he found himself laughing as Summer fire and Winter Frost crashed onto his body.

He felt like being torn apart in tiny little million pieces, sort of like how Mike Teevee  must have felt in Charlie and the Chocolate factory when he was sent across the room through a camera.

He felt his essence dissolving, then coalescing into what seemed to be an energy bomb.

And then he started falling.

He saw the ball of energy that had been created from his essence falling on the ground, shattering as if in slow motion then washing through the field like a high tide obliterating everything.

Only…

Only it was not  _ everything. _  The tide passed over Summer and Winter Sidhe and Outsiders alike but while it never bothered the fae, no more than a shaft of sunlight would, it reacted to the Outsiders like acid witht e final bits of the blast crashing on the Outer Gates, washing over them and—

Holy shit they had just disappeared.

There had no been a portal left, no doorway hanging, no nothing. It was as if someone had simply painted over where the Gates had been, effectively blending everything to the surrounding environment.

Harry looked above as he kept falling only to see Mab being hit by a blast, frowning.

When had Mab had her hair cut and why was she also falling?

"Ventas  _ giostrus. Veni Che _ " he breathed with all the power he was left with channeling the spell first to Mab then to himself.

And then Harry hit the ground.

He had been extremely surprised when he finally opened his eyes and realised that he was very much alive, thank you very much.

Moly was next to him, an eerie silence spread where previously there were horn blaring and bows twinging and magic blasts cast all around.

"Is it over?" he croaked.

Molly was crying and nodded her head, trying to wipe her tears away at the same time.

"Hell’s Bells, we won?" he asked sitting up.

Molly nodded again, still wiping her eyes and sniffing. His face broke into a huge grin.

"My Queen." someone called. He turned around searching for Mab but he couldn;t locate her.

And then he realized the voice hadn’t referred to Mab.

"Where’s Mab, Molly?"

Molly shook her head. Once. Twice.

No.

"Mab’s gone, Harry." her voice was so small. "Mab is dead."


	3. Chapter 3

When Bela had been a girl, there was a pond near her family’s house. In winter it would freeze over solid, and all the local children would skate on it, and host snowball fights. Some years they’d be warned that the ice was thin, and be admonished with tales of unwise children who hadn’t heeded sense and fallen through. No one actually knew anyone who had, but somehow, it was still fact that such an event had occured. It was in the memory of the place, in it’s bones. 

The idea had fascinated her. She’d had dreams of slipping out in the dead of night, walking barefoot through the snow all the way to the pond. Of taking slow, deliberate steps towards its centre, of hearing the first rumble and shudder beneath her numb feet, and that moment when it had finally given way. She’d freeze before she drowned. All in all it didn’t sound so bad.

Bela had thought a lot about dying in those days.

Another life. 

She struck the water hard enough to knock the remaining breath from her lungs, and the shock of cold was such that it rended the feeling out of her limbs. She had no arms, no legs, no heartbeat, just cold.

But there was something in her that still gasped for life, and even as she sank there was some vigour left. Enough to kick for the surface, to break through the surf with a gasp that made her chest come aflame with agony. And she breathed.

Bela pulled herself onto the cold, stony beach on the Isle of Skye, and breathed. 

* * *

 

Never in the nearly twenty five years since Mab began hounding him did he ever think that he would ever feel sorry that she would be gone.

Molly’s words hit him like a brick. She was lying. She had to be.

Only Molly was Sidhe now, had been for at least eight years, nine? His mind didn’t seem to want to do the math. Which meant she couldn’t lie.

Which meant she was his Queen now.

Numbness.

"Where?" he said and didn’t need to specify. Molly helped him up and led him to Mab’s tent.

He didn’t even know how long the battle had lasted but he was pretty sure it couldn’t have been more than a few hours. He recalled coming by her tent the previous day to bring her a book to help her take her mind off things and Mab had been different. Serene, almost gentle.

They had spent the past six months trading books and although Harry wasn’t always fond of the ones she lent to him she always seemed delighted with the ones he brought.

So he had brought her Tolkien as a joke.

Molly said she’d wait outside. He walked to the tent, wards now gone, and pulled the canvas flap aside making his way in. 

And there she was on her makeshift bed. Asleep.

Right?

He knew they must have been lying, Mab couldn’t be dead, she was Mab for crying out loud. He walked carefully close to her and saw that her hands had been laid crossed on her stomach. He extended a hand to touch her fingers.

They felt icy cold, plastic, fake.

She had always had a lower body temperature than he did but she had never been this cold. Her coldness emanated life and power and strength. This cold… this.. felt like rubber

He curled his fingers around her hand and squeezed it.

"Mab." he growled, "Wake up, Mab, we must go back."

Silence.

He took a look at her face. Her neck was in a strange angle and she was pale. Paler than usual, her lips usually perfectly made up now looked dry, but it was okay. She would wake up and drink some water and all would be fine, right?

"Come on you freezepop bitch, get up." he snarled, his voice breaking, "Get up and boss me around."

He saw her hair, singed and short now, the beginnings of the french braiding still there close to her skull but the magnificent mass of silken locks was gone.

"Who cut your hair, Mab?" he asked lowly, "Say the word and I’ll kill them, just— speak to me. Don’t just lie there."

He had knelt by her without realizing it, without letting go of her hand and his gaze wandered in the tent. He saw the flap above the bed, knew it was for the stars, she loved stargazing, child of the Night as she was.

Then his eyes came to rest upon his book and noticed the scrap of paper she had placed among the pages as a bookmark, set next to a half empty pot of coffee. He reached for the book with his free hand and opened it.

_“ But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while they still endure for eyes to see, are ever their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song.” _

And then it hit him.

Mab would never finish this book, or any other. Her coffee pot would never empty again, she’d never boss him around again or send him away to life-threatening tasks. They’d never verbally spar again, he’d never hear his Queen’s voice again.

Hell’s Bells, why couldn’t he see clearly?

He leaned over her and rested his forehead on her chest as he found himself sobbing for his Queen, a Queen he never wanted to serve, never tried to understand. 

"Fuck you," he whispered when his tears ran dry, pressing a kiss on the back of her hand. "You just had to go and die. Magnificent, stupid, bossy, ice bitch.”

* * *

Bela Talbot was Done.

She was done stringing together lies and trying to explain away her injuries to the stout scottish nurse currently staring her down. Yes, it was a car accident, no, there wasn’t anyone else involved. And no, she didn’t have a good explanation for why she’d been found by a fisherman half conscious on the tide line two days prior.

"And the costume?", the nurse chirped, with a gesture to the light armour that had been piled in the corner with the remainder of her original clothing.

"It’s a sex thing", Bela drawled, which thankfully shut the woman up for a while. 

She’d been brought in with a mild concussion, a bloody scalp wound, some fractured ribs, a sprained wrist, and a nasty gash over her right hip. All and all, it could have been a lot worse. She was alive, and the world hadn’t ended.

Well, at least she thought so, time passed differently in the Nevernever, for all she knew the battle might still be raging. She doubted she could open a Way back to that bloody field even if she was back at proper strength, and she could hardly text someone for an update. 

The walls of the cottage hospital on Skye seemed to close in on her, and she buzzed with the need to get out, and get away.She’d tried to check herself out as soon as the stitches were in, but the doctor forbid her to budge until they determined how serious her head wound was. She somehow managed not to blow out any equipment other than a few light fixtures, but she had a feeling that had something to do with how much magic she’d expelled in the battle. 

The stocky ginger nurse eventually rebandaged her hip and informed her that she was being discharged, with the doctor’s go ahead. Bela gratefully changed back into real clothing, having been given some sweats and a t-shirt to leave in, and a bag to carry the bloody mess she’d worn in. While packaging it all up, a tiny slip of paper fell from within the rows of scales on the armour. Mind elsewhere, Bela tucked it away in a pocket to dispose of later. 

The doctor, a balding man of about sixty knocked on the door, clipboard in hand, “You’re eager to leave”, he acknowledged in a thick Scottish brogue.

"I’ve got to get back to work", Bela shrugged, hoisting the bag onto her shoulder, avoiding the cast on her wrist.

"Sure there’s no one we can call to come fetch you? Family?" The old man asked, signing off on a paper or two. 

"I don’t have any", Bela said without thinking, sliding past him and out into the painfully white hallway.

"Ms. Talbot?" He said sharply, and she turned back, attention caught by his tone. He tapped the pen on her chart, "There’s one more thing…"

***

It’s a ferry ride, two trains, and a rather expensive taxi ride later that Bela feels like she can breath again. She moves like a ghost, making her way back to her flat in London like something lost and haunting. She’s had the place for years, but it mostly served as storage more than anything. It’s a waystation, a place to sleep without an eye open, it was never home. Bela never really figured out how to have one of those.

The world still hasn’t ended. 

She doesn’t know what that means. 

She finds a pay phone, because she sure as hell can’t be trusted around anything more complicated right now, and dials a number from memory.  It rings for an eternity, and in the pauses she counts a rythmn of facts, of touchstones and anchors.

_ My name is Bela Talbot. _

_ I was a thief, a great thief. _

_ I was dead, and then I wasn’t. _

_ There was a battle, I fought. _

_ I wanted to be brave, I wasn’t. _

_ Almost everyone I have called a friend or ally might be dead- _

_ I’m here _ . 

I’m _here_. 

A masculine voice finally answers on the other end, and Bela finds her voice shaking, cheek leaning into the earpiece.

"It’s me. We- we have to talk."

***

The piece of paper nearly goes into the wash. Bela scoops it up off the tile floor before dumping the rest of the clothes into the washer. Without thinking, she unfolds it with one hand while shutting the lid on the machine and setting the machine cycle.

Four words, scrawled in elegant, spidery writing that she’d learned to recognize in a heartbeat. 

The washing machine groans as it’s power fails, and the lights overhead flicker in strained effort. She’d been living in a fog, since she got back, none of it had seemed real. The shriek of thunderbirds and howls of dying things and a screaming earth- those were the things of nightmares. That was a landscape in which she didn’t belong, and never could. 

But this wasn’t a dream. The smudge of blood in the left corner of the scrap, the one spot where the ink had run slightly? Real. Bela looked down at the paper, torn from a greater piece by opalescent nails, and just  _ knew _  that its author was dead. 

It seemed impossible, but she’d already seen so many impossible things. A low shuddering breath escaped her lips, and she wants to cry or swear or scream. But all she does is slide down the machine until she’s sitting on the tiles and curl an arm around her midsection, gaze fixed on the tiny message.

_ It is a girl. - M _

***

It’s a week before she gets up the nerve, but she does.

Bela’s spent too much of her life running, too much of it hiding. And if there was one thing she’d learned in that time it was that sometimes little girls grow up to have wolf’s teeth, and the only way out of the forest was through. 

She opens the way into Winter, not knowing what she’d see. 

Arctis Tor is still standing and the stronghold is teeming with life. It is Harry who greets her at the Gates.

As it turned out Mab had been fine when she was hit by the blast. She would have survived it if she hadn’t fallen unconscious and in falling broke her neck.

The freaking Queen of Air and Darkness had died from a broken neck.

Molly hadn’t absorbed how  _ stupid _  that was, no matter how often Harry had pointed it out.

They had a new Lady too. It was no one Harry knew, he hadn’t paid much attention to her.

He had considered asking Molly to release him from Knighthood but then thought of the  ~~years~~   ~~eons~~  millennia she had in front of her as Winter Queen and how soon (by her standards) she would be alone again and didn’t say a thing.

He doesn’t speak at first as he and Bela walk. He doesn’t say anything and while he hasn’t shaved, his hair is neat and short once more, a large gash still healing over his left cheek. This will leave a scar.

He doesn’t explain anything. He simply takes her not to the throne room but to one of the smaller courtyards where there still a scorch mark on the ground, the snow not touching the area there.

"She didn’t want to be buried underground." he says. It’s the first words that come out of him. He doesn’t need to clarify. He knows that she will understand. "She mentioned it once in passing."

His tone is grim, dark.

"Where have  _ you _  been?”

Bela was still favoring the leg that hadn’t been gashed, but was trying hard not to limp. Old habits died hard, and you didn’t show weakness in front of the sidhe. 

She spares only a glance for the Knight’s grim and silent face, she’d known him in earlier years. They’d been friendly, if only as coworkers, but there was something in the way he looked at her that stung, like an accusation. 

She trailed half a pace behind him into the courtyard, the cold making the healing wound on her hip throb.

Bela swallowed, “She opened a Way, dropped me in the outer Hebrides. Took me days to get back.”

Because of course, those cold fingers had been Mab’s at the end, no one else had any cause to help her, even if that help involved a dip in the north sea. 

Bela swallowed, looking at the spot in the centre of the courtyard, and unconsciously curled her arms about herself. She looked down at the snow, shifting her weight off her injured leg. She had no place here anymore, not really. Her connection to the court had been through Mab and Sarissa, and tenuous at best, and now they were both gone.

"I-I doubt you will", she said, feeling the prick of cold on her skin, "But if Molly needs anything, if you do, you know how to get ahold of me."

Harry had thanked her for her offer but said he indeed doubted they would. He still couldn’t fathom why Mab would have gotten in the way of the blast to save this woman… and him. He had done his part, the ritual had been finished.

And rolling their conversations over and over in his mind since Mab’s death he had realized she had expected her downfall.

Everything had been neatly arranged, her debts settled, long lists of instructions left for Molly.

She had never expected to come back.

"I can’t see why you get to live while she’s dead." he said bitterly. "Or me, for what is worth." he didn’t expect for an answer. He went on his way.

 

_ Because life isn’t fair, _  she’d wanted to snap back, and once she would have. _ Because death doesn’t care about things like worth and merit, the saint and the killer are all the same. _  But she didn’t. Whatever reeling she was doing, she knew he had it worse, the world knocked off kilter. 

_ So she nodded her goodbye, pulled her coat collar in close, and left the knight to his pain.  _

_ __It would have been you who died elseway._ she thought._ Feeling a cold that had nothing to do with the snow, she turned to walk away and return to the gates.   
_

_ _

Shortly after, Molly sought her out and caught her before reaching the gates.

"Ms. Talbot." she called, "Bela, wait."

Molly was younger than Bela, which made it weird for her to be Queen of Winter now and she obviously still hadn’t managed the posh talk and demeanor that became the Queen of Winter.

"Mab told me." she said pointedly, looking at her stomach. "If you ever need help from Winter, let me know."

She knew that Molly was rightfully only a few years younger than her, but she didn’t look a day over twenty-seven, and never would now. Still, there was something around her now, in her bearing that came with the weight of centuries. Bela gave her a very small smile, they’d never been friends, but she’d always appreciated the Lady’s spunk.

It shouldn’t surprise her that Mab had spilled the beans, it wouldn’t surprise her to find out that she’d told everyone but Bela herself. That was just the way the old diva had worked. She looked down at her midsection, deceptive in its flat contours,

"Thank you", she said softly, "But I know better than to go around asking favours from the sidhe." 

It comes out harsher than she ever meant it to sound, she didn’t know her bearing here anymore, not with Mab gone. 

"Molly", she said quickly, before turning to leave, "…You’re going to do just fine, you know?"

Maybe she read the situation wrong, maybe the other woman didn’t have the slightest bit of doubt about her new role, but Bela had imagined herself in a similar scenario and, well. ..

"She believed in you, and whether we liked it or not, she was usually right."

Molly nodded. “I know.” she said solemnly. “I know what you did with the electric charge in the field. It bought her time.”

Her lightning bomb had ended up killing the horror as it had shattered Dresden’s ice cage, large chunks of ice impaling it. It had meant a lot for the time frame the ritual had been completed.

"What I’m trying to say is, you’re a friend of Winter. We  _ owe _  you.”

She smiled firmly at her before she departed.

And like with any war, the dead were mourned, and life went on.

The next time Molly saw Bela Talbot was in a clinic.

* * *

 

A year to the day she last stepped out of Arctis Tor, Bela cradled a book in her lap and watched the sun sink below the horizon through her window. It painted the sky in fire oranges and the pinks of autumn fruit as shadows crept over the landscape. 

She turned a page with one hand, lazily skimming the words as steam from her tea rose on the table beside her. A tug on her hair and a small burble brought her out of the story, and she set the book aside. Her baby daughter had gotten a fistful of tawny hair and was whining for attention, nap now over. 

Bela hoisted her in the crook of her arm with a sigh, setting the book aside on the table, propped open to her page. Neve Eira Talbot burrowed against her mother’s shoulder with another burble and clung on tighter.

"It’s much more fun in fiction, I assure you", Bela murmured, leaning her cheek against Neve’s downy head and looking down at her copy of The Fellowship of the Ring. It was hard not to see darkness in even the jollier scenes the book held, find sinister notes in the songs. 

_ Home is behind _

_ The world ahead _

_ And there are many paths to tread _

_ Through shadow _

_ To the edge of night _

_ Until the stars are all alight _

_ Mist and shadow _

_ Cloud and shade _

_ All shall fade _

_ All shall- _


End file.
